The Modern World Is Designed to Destroy You | Naval Ravikant transcript

Life is really a single player game. It's all going on in your head. You know, whatever you think you believe will very much shape your reality. Both from what risks you take and what actions you perform, but also just your everyday experience of reality. If you're walking down the street and you're judging everyone, you're like, "I don't like that person cuz of their skin color. I don't like that Oh, she's She's not attractive.

That guy's fat. This person's a loser. Oh, who put this in my way? You know, the more you judge, the more you're going to separate yourself. And you'll feel good for an instant because you'll feel good about yourself. I'm better than that. But then you're going to feel lonely. And then you're just going to see negativity everywhere. The world just reflects your own feelings back at you. Reality is neutral. Reality has no judgments to it.

And so I was just trying to resolve for myself like what could the answer be? Right? Not what is the answer, but what could the answer be? And so at a core level, I was forced to kind of hunt down all these weird little things and really understand for myself. It's got to be personal, right? But I had to establish for myself what it could and could not be. And that gave me some level of peace. So now I don't have to keep asking that question over >> What is the meaning of life? >> [laughter] >> I mean, you you should I think the question is more interesting than the answer.

Everyone should explore this on their own. But let me just explore a few parts with you, right? >> Okay. So first is if I gave you an answer, if I said the meaning of life is to please God. Well, which God? Okay, Judeo-Christian God. Well, okay, why that one? Why this thing? The problem is it's a why question. You can keep asking why forever. Right. Right? Any answer I give you, you'll just ask why again, why again, why again.

That's right. >> And you end up in a place called Agrippa's Trilemma. Okay, this is a philosophical exercise, but I I I kind of thought it through then Googled around and there's a thing called Agrippa's Trilemma. And Agrippa's Trilemma says that any questioning like this, why, will always end in one of three places. Okay? First is infinite regress. Right? Why? Because of this. Why that? Why that? You know, you'll just keep going forever.

The second is circular reasoning. Well, A. Why A? Cuz of B. Well, why B? Because of A. You find you get trapped in that. Or the third is an axiom. And the most popular axiom is God. But it could be anything. Cuz of math, cuz of science, cuz of the Big Bang, cuz of simulation. Right? These are all axioms. These are all just stopping points. Saying simulation, we're in a simulation, or saying it's the Big Bang, is just another way of saying God.

It's just God's a dirty word, so we don't use it as much anymore, but same thing. So, you end up in one of these three dead ends, essentially. Right? So, there is no answer. Uh the real answer is because. >> [laughter] >> Right? What is the meaning of life? >> Yeah, you get to make up your own answer is the beauty. If there was a single answer, we would not be free. We would be trapped. Because then we would all have to live to that answer.

Then we'd be borg-like robots, each one competing with each other to fulfill that single meaning more than the others. Back to signaling, like I'm better at at than you are. But luckily, there is no answer. So, you just do whatever you want. Well, the answers to all the great questions are paradoxes. Yeah. So, for example, you're asking like, do I matter? That's like really the question you asked, right? Well, how do I matter in this infinite universe?

Well, you know, on the one hand, you're separate. No two points are the same. Every point is Every two points are infinitely different. You're completely separated. No one will have your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings, your experience. So, your life is a single-player game. You're trapped inside your head, and you're just aware of a bunch of things going on, and that's it. On the other hand, I cannot say the word Joe Rogan without invoking the entire universe.

Joe Rogan Alien comes along, says, "What's that?" Joe Rogan. What's Joe Rogan? It's a human. What's a human? Bipedal ape. What's an ape? On the earth. What's the earth? Planet. What's a planet? Solar system. Where was the carbon made? Inside stars. Right? It's a I have to create the entire universe to just say the words Joe Rogan. So, in that sense, you're connected to everything. It's inseparable. So, the answer to that question of do I matter is I am nothing and I am everything.

And you'll find this with all the great questions. The answers are all paradoxes, which is why at some level it's sort of pointless to pursue them to find a trite answer like I'm giving, but the act of pursuing them is actually really useful because then it gives you certain intrinsic understanding in your life that brings a level of peace. I wonder where this is going. I really do. I I wonder cuz this is it seems like this newfound ability to broadcast that we have with whether you have a YouTube page or whether you have a Twitter or whatever you're doing, this newfound ability to spread whatever you're trying to say to so many people with very little understanding on the most part from I I think it's actually a great thing overall.

Yeah, I do as well. Now it means that any human can broadcast to any other human on the planet at any time. I think that the human brain is not designed to absorb all of the world's breaking news 24/7 emergencies injected straight into your skull with clickbait headline news. If you pay attention to that stuff, even if you're well-meaning, even if you're sound of mind and body, it will eventually drive you insane. I think that's what's happening right now because these are addictive, right?

The Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, these are weaponized. You have social statisticians and scientists and researchers and people in lab coats literally best minds of our generation figuring out how to addict you to the news. Yes. And if you fall for it, if you get addicted, your brain will get destroyed. And I think this is the modern struggle. Right? The modern struggle. So, the ancient struggle used to be the tribal struggle.

You had your tribe of friends and family, you had your religion, you had your country, you had your loyalty, you had your nationality. At least you had meaning and support, but now you would struggle against other tribes. Modern life, we're so free, everything's become atomized. We stand alone. You live in your apartment alone. You live in your house alone. Your parents don't live nearby. Your friends don't live nearby.

You don't have any tribal meaning. You don't believe in religion anymore. You don't believe in country anymore. It's fine. You got a lot of freedom. It's fantastic. But now, when they come to attack you, you're alone. And you can't resist. So, how do they attack you? It's all well-meaning. I don't fault capitalism. I love capitalism. But look at how it happens. Social media, they've massaged all the mechanisms to addict you like a Skinner's pigeon or a rat who's just going to click, click, click, click, click.

Can't put the phone down. The food, they've taken sugar and they've weaponized it. They've put it into all these different forms and varieties that you can't resist eating. Drugs, right? They've taken pharmaceuticals and plants and they've synthesized them. They've grown them in such a way that you can't you get addicted. You can't put them down. Porn, right? If you're a young male, you wander on the internet, it'll like sap away your libido and you're not going out in real life society anymore cuz you've got this incredibly stimulating stuff coming at you.

Video games, another way to addict people. So, you have this you have entire large factories of people that are working to addict you to these things and you stand alone. So, the modern struggle as an individual is learning how to resist these things in the first place, drawing your own boundaries. And there's no one there to help you. Oof. That's terrifying. Extreme power. The most powerful people in the world today, and this is not well-known, but the most powerful people in the world today are the people who are running the algorithms for Twitter and Facebook and Instagram.

Because they're controlling the spread of information. They're literally rewriting people's brains. They're programming the culture. And they're doing it very subtly. You know, when I was growing up, there was this statement. I think it was Pascal. He said, you know, all of man's problems arise because he cannot sit by himself in a room for 30 minutes alone. Mhm. And it's very true. I always needed to be stimulated. And when the iPhone came along, boredom was dead.

I would never be bored again. I Even if I'm standing in line, I'm on my iPhone, and I thought it was great. And when I was a kid, I used to try and overclock my brain, be like, "How many thoughts can I think at once?" The answer is only one, but I would try to like think multiple thoughts at once, and I was proud of that. I was proud that my brain was always running, this engine was always moving. And it's a disease.

It's actually the road to misery. And now that I'm older, I realize like you actually want to, again, rest your mind. You want to learn how to settle into your mind. And now, I look forward to solitary confinement. You leave me alone for a day, it'll be like the happiest day I've had in a while. Uh and and that is a superpower that I think everybody can attain. The superpower of learning to be alone and enjoying it. >> Yeah.

And when I first started meditating, it was really hard, right? Cuz everybody I I think a lot of people who are listening to this broadcast, they've heard of meditation, it has a good rep, so everybody tries it, they struggle, they kind of give it up. It's one of those things that everybody says they do, but nobody actually does, right? It's like not eating sugar, right? Everyone talks about how Yeah, I don't eat sugar, but like Yeah, then then the dessert tray rolls around, and everyone's going for the cookies.

Right? So, it's become one of those thing And in fact, it's now even become a signaling thing, where it's like, "Oh, how much did you meditate?" I meditated this much, or But really, all it is is the art of doing nothing, okay? And it's important because I think when we when we grow up, right? It's all this stuff happening to you in your life, and some of it you're processing, some of it you're absorbing, and some of it you should probably think a little bit more about and work through, but you don't.

You don't have time. So, it gets buried in you, and it's all these preferences and judgments and unresolved situations and issues. And it's like your email inbox, it's just piling up, email after email after email that's not answered, going back 10, 20, 30, 40 years. And then when you sit down to meditate, those emails start coming back at you. Hey, what about this issue? What about that issue? Have you solved this? Did you think about that?

You have regrets there? You have issues there? And that gets scary. People don't want to do that. It's like, "It's not working. I can't clear my mind. I better get up and not do this." But really what's happening is this it's it's self therapy. It's just that instead of paying a therapist to sit there and listen to you, you're listening to yourself. And you just have to sit there as those emails go through one by one, you work through each of them until you get to the magical inbox zero.

And there comes a day when you sit down, you realize the only things you're thinking about are things that happened yesterday because you've processed everything else. Not necessarily even resolved it, at least listen to yourself. And that's when meditation starts, and I think it's a it's a very powerful thing that everybody should experience. And that's when you arrive